


You are safe

by resonae



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Blindness, Healing, M/M, Muteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 10:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resonae/pseuds/resonae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing else Herc loves more than his son. Herc knows this for a fact. Raleigh/Chuck is more of a background relationship, kind of more focuses on Herc and Chuck's father-son dynamic</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are safe

No one loves Chuck as much as Herc loves Chuck. Herc knows this for a fact.

 

There is also nothing else Herc loves more than his son. Herc also knows this for a fact.

 

Sometimes (most of the time), he’s bad at expressing it. He’s very bad at expressing it. But they used to Drift, and he knows Chuck understood. But he wonders if Chuck _knew_ , at that split moment when Striker Eureka exploded.

 

The Shatterdome is in celebration around him, and he leaves LOCCENT quietly. He reports to work as the new Marshal the next day, and some people say he’s a monster. Only Tendo and Mako really understand. Maybe Raleigh does, a little.

 

Mako and Raleigh are flooded with press conferences. At one point, the reporters ask, “What do you have to say about Ranger Hansen reporting to work right after his son died? Was their father-son dynamic as bad as the rumors say?”

 

Herc is listening off to the side, and knows the reporter is saying it just for him. Raleigh bristles, but Mako (thank _god_ for Mako) doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she says, smoothly but fiercely, “ _Marshal_ Hansen and Ranger Chuck Hansen were never good at communications, but their relationship was unquestionable. Anyone who doubts that their dynamic was bad obviously has absolutely no understanding about the Drift sciences. The Drift needs a strong connection to work, and the Hansens’ record as the best Jaegar pilot team does not lie.” She takes a sip of her water. “They say that a parent should not have to bury their child, but _Marshal_ Hansen does not even have a body to bury. I think a little respect is in order for not only the dead who gave their lives to save the world, but also the living who gave up everything for the world.”

 

The reporters are embarrassedly silent after that, and the press conference comes to a close.

 

\--

 

Two days after that, Herc gets a report of a Striker Eureka pod off to the coast of Busan. They can’t wedge it open, and they don’t dare try cutting it open in case they hurt whoever’s inside. Herc flies over. The window is a burnt black and Herc can’t see what’s inside, but he thinks _Chuck might be inside_.

 

And he rips the pod open with his bare hands.

 

It’s Chuck underneath.

 

There’s a slash across his eyes, the wound bloody and burnt and infected. There’s blood everywhere, something lodged in his throat, bones sticking out of where they pierced through skin, and for a moment Herc’s afraid that he’s found Chuck just to lose him again.

 

But the paramedics descend and they’re yelling about a pulse. _Sorry Marshal we gotta do this_ , they tell him, as they push him away so they can have another medic in his place. Herc doesn’t even feel another medic tend to his (broken, he finds out later) hands. After what it seems like an infinity, they’re lifting Chuck onto a stretcher, holding an oxygen mask to his face and Herc doesn’t remember the rest of it.

 

Chuck’s in surgery for an eternity. Inside, Herc’s secretly glad Chuck drifted ashore in South Korea, in its 2nd biggest city, no less, with its advanced doctors and hospitals, instead of in some Third World country where they would have had to transport Chuck _again_ and he didn’t know if Chuck would survive that.

 

After hours and hours and hours of pacing later, the doctor comes out. Herc stops pacing. Raleigh and Mako jerk up from their seats. Tendo jolts awake.

 

The doctor looks around at them, swallows, and says, “Good news is, he is alive. He’s going to make it.” None of them say anything. The doctor looks decidedly uncomfortable, but says, “The damage to his cornea and his vocal chords are irreversible. I’m… afraid that he’s blind and mute.”

 

\--

 

Chuck’s scheduled to be in ICU for the next two weeks. He has a collapsed lung, but thankfully that’s his only internal organ damage. It could’ve been worse, Herc tells himself. His stomach could have ruptured and he could have had blood poisoning. Or his intestines could have torn. Or the worst, there could be something wrong with his heart. But a collapsed lung is fixable. It heals.

 

Chuck’s also got broken bones everywhere. His left leg is broken in three places, his right in four, with his right femur torn through his skin. Ribs number 4-8 are either fractured or broken. His left radius broke, and his right humerus has also broken through skin.

 

He also has cuts everywhere, ranging from so deep Herc had been able to see inside Chuck’s body to those as shallow as scrapes. They had to carefully take every shrapnel and glass shard from everywhere inside Chuck.

 

Herc strokes the white bandages covering Chuck’s eyes and thinks it could be worse.

 

Chuck’s alive, after all. That’s all he needs.

 

\--

 

Five days in ICU, Chuck wakes up. He panics, first, at his inability to see, and then panics again when he finds he can’t talk. He rips his IV out, tears his oxygen mask away, jars his broken bones, and opens multiple cuts before Herc and Raleigh can calm him down. He goes back into surgery only because they manage to sedate him.

 

Thirteen hours later when he wakes up again, Herc is holding him. Not holding his hand – holding him, folding himself bodily around his son. Chuck tries to struggle again, but Herc’s holding him firmly. “You’re fine. You’re good. You’re safe.”

 

Chuck lets out a strange whimpering sound, gargled in his mangled vocal chords, and then almost falls into panic again. But Herc doesn’t let go. “Chuck. You’re safe. I got you.”

 

It takes a while for Chuck to get calm enough for the doctors and nurses to do a vitals check. Other than his eyes and throat (and his reopened injuries), Chuck is doing fairly well. When he’s calmer, Herc quietly fills him in on what’s happening to him.

 

Chuck just breathes harshly in and out through the oxygen mask and clings onto his father. Herc’s fine with that, because he’s not going anywhere else, anyway. Herc just tells him, “I’ve got you, and you’re safe.”

 

\--

 

Mako and Tendo fly back to Hong Kong, but Raleigh stays. Herc narrows his eyes at Raleigh, because he’s unsure what to think about Raleigh, but the younger Ranger stays. After his first panic attacks, Chuck becomes angry and self-destructive. He refuses to cooperate with any of his treatments, thrashing out and jarring bones and opening wounds whenever a doctor tries to get near. He hisses – it’s a distorted hiss, but it’s one of two noises he can make – whenever he hears footsteps approach him, a warning that he’s about to throw himself into fits.

 

Herc stays by his son’s side. He and Raleigh are the only ones that can get anywhere near Chuck’s, and Chuck can tell them apart. He reaches out for his father more than he does for Raleigh, whimpering – his second noise – when he doesn’t come into contact with his father right away. Herc then shoots off his chair, grabs Chuck’s hand and whispers, “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

 

Sometimes, Chuck will let doctors and nurses approach if Herc’s holding him, or if Raleigh’s nearby. Between the two of them, they manage to get Chuck healed enough so he can be moved back to Hong Kong. His move disappoints a lot of the nurses, who’ve taken a liking to Herc and Raleigh. They try to convince Herc that Korea has the best doctors, and because it was shielded by the Kaiju attacks by Japan, their economy doesn’t have to focus on rebuilding, which is always a plus.

 

Herc smiles and tells them he knows, but he has to get back to work, and he can’t leave his son alone in a foreign country. So they fly back to Hong Kong.

 

Now that Herc’s back, a flood of work awaits him, and he bitterly leaves Raleigh to deal with Chuck’s doctors and nurses. Chuck faces an incredible amount of recovery, ranging from physical therapy to learning Braille and sign language.

 

By the time Herc sees Chuck again, it’s a week later, and Chuck is nothing but bitter at him. He makes angry hand gestures at Herc, who stare. Raleigh says, “He says he doesn’t want to see you and that you should abandon him like you already did.”

 

Herc’s used to Chuck’s thorns, but the shock of Raleigh being able to understand the sign language leaves him numb. “You understood that?”

 

Raleigh shrugs, looking almost accusatorily at him. “I was with him when they were teaching him sign language, sir. I learned.”

 

\--

 

It’s the last straw Herc’s willing to take. Herc buys a small house on a huge plot of land in Australia, near Sydney, and tells PPDC a very big _fuck you_ before taking his son, Max (and grudgingly Raleigh) to it.

 

He hires a new sign language teacher and a physical therapist, spending an hour before Chuck’s usual session so he can catch up to everything he’s missed. Chuck learns it through sheer force of will, speeding fluency through frustration and anger like he’s always done. Sometimes he throws things, opens up his wounds and makes his bones misaligned while he’s doing it, but there’s progress. Because Chuck Hansen may fight his adaptation tooth and nail, but he was always a fast adapter.

 

Their sign language teacher suggests that Chuck get a seeing-eye dog, which is completely out of the question because they have Max, and Chuck won’t even think about getting another one. Max, in any case, is smart enough to understand that Chuck isn’t like how he used to be, that Max needs to now help him get along. He’s mostly the reason Chuck stays sane through his grueling physical therapy, when he sinks again and again to the ground on shaky legs. He doesn’t let either Herc or Raleigh touch him when he’s down, but Max will come up, slobber all over Chuck until Chuck can grip the physical therapist’s hands again to get himself up.

 

[Teach him Morse code,] Tendo suggests over the phone one day. It’s been a bad day for all three of them, with Chuck stuttering on his sign language. To make matters worse, he twisted his ankle trying to push himself too far and he’s bedridden again. He’s thrown everything in his reach and his room is a mess, and he won’t let anyone inside the room except Max. [You know Morse code. Raleigh’s decent at it.]

 

So Herc stands in front of Chuck’s door and taps Y-O-U A-R-E S-A-F-E over and over again until his knuckles are bruised. Chuck opens it, finally, coming to the door on his wheelchair. He signs, _What the fuck are you doing_. Chuck’s demanded to learn the curse words with this new teacher, and he uses them liberally.

 

“Teaching you Morse code,” Herc says. Chuck glares in his general direction but wheels back to let him in. The room’s full of glass shards, and Raleigh appears out of nowhere to clean up as Herc starts teaching Chuck Morse. Raleigh sits with Chuck, brushing up on his rusty code. Pretty soon they’re all talking in dots and dashes – it does wonders for Chuck, that they’re speaking the same language to him. Before, he’d signed and they’d talked to him since he could still hear, but now everyone’s talking in taps and clicks.

 

Mako comes to visit, and she scorns Chuck for the trouble he’s causing his father and her co-pilot, though she’s gentle. She doesn’t bother with Morse – just talks as Chuck signs to her or clicks angrily in her direction. She’s used to it, thankfully, and she coaxes Chuck out of his room, supporting him on his crutches instead of wheeling him on his wheelchair.

 

She cooks that night, and it’s the first time in a while Herc sees Chuck at the dining table. He can’t handle solid food yet, with his throat still damaged, but Mako isn’t bad at anything, and she makes a whole table full of soft foods.

 

\--

 

Learning Braille takes much more finesse than Morse code or sign language did. Chuck has a tendency to jam his fingers to the paper, and the teacher keeps telling him, “No, _softer_ , or you won’t be able to distinguish them.”

 

Chuck’s specialty isn’t exactly finesse. It takes him weeks just to be able to learn the exact pressure so he can feel out the bumps and distinguish them under his fingers. Braille takes a lot longer for Chuck to learn, but something’s changed in Chuck. He doesn’t throw stuff or break mirrors, just makes the hissing noise he’s been making and gives double the effort.

 

Herc doesn’t really know what changed until he sees Raleigh and Chuck one day. Raleigh’s on Chuck’s bed, curled around Chuck, fingers brushing over his scars and whispering something Herc can’t hear into Chuck’s ear. Chuck turns in his bed and whimpers, and Raleigh holds him closer.

 

\--

 

There is nothing else Herc loves more than his son. Herc knows this for a fact.

 

No one loves Chuck as much as Herc loves Chuck. Herc also knows this for a fact.

 

But, Herc thinks softly, Raleigh Becket might come a close second. He clicks out I-H-A-V-E-Y-O-U-Y-O-U-A-R-E-S-A-F-E to Chuck, and is rewarded with the biggest smile he’s seen in a while.

 

 


End file.
